Not Waving but Drowning by Stevie Smith | Poetry Foundation: Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.
Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he’s dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.
Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.
Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning: // jim crace After they died. no:
Being Dead. I think of a lot. //
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.
Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he’s dead //
no end sentence prd? bcs what they are saying still cont all one? //
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way, //
whew long meter? bcs it is "them" talking//
They said.
Oh, no no no, it was too cold always //
sad no no no //
I was never larking. I was much further than you thought. //
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life //
very sad
And not waving but drowning.
...
below post: paper by stl negativism countertransference. bartleby.
would neither work nor leave.
___________________________________________________________
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46479/not-waving-but-drowning
[here cut pasted so their html formatting:
Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.
Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he’s dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.
Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.
-
Not Waving but Drowning:
She wrote the poem in 1953, during a period of deep depression. Even
though she had gained some fame in the late 1930s and had recently
performed her poems on three separate BBC programs, she was having
trouble finding anyone to publish her new work. She felt imprisoned by
the secretarial job she had held for twenty years. Only a few months
after writing "Not Waving but Drowning," she slashed her wrists in her
office (
source).
The Mezzo Cammin Women Poets Timeline - Smith
The Mezzo Cammin Women Poets Timeline - Stevie Smith | Novel on Yellow Paper "it is a wise thing that every intelligent, sensitive child should early be accustomed to the thought of death by suicide" (155).
// .... no .... so as to have the idea as comfort? no....
Later in the argument she continues
"No, when I sat up and said: Death has got to come if I call him, I never called him and never have" (160-161).
// yes. //
Although one must typically be wary of identifying novelists with their
first person narrators, even David Garnett, an early reviewer of
Novel on Yellow Paper,
noted that Stevie
wasn't "writing a novel at all, but saying just what
she feels about herself, her employer, her aunt, her lovers, her
friends, and the good people, or not-so-good people, she stayed with in
Germany" (Sternlight 54).
With this in mind it is fair to assume that the novel's protagonist,
Pompey Casmilus, is speaking Stevie Smith's thoughts when she says "it
is a wise thing that every intelligent, sensitive child should early be
accustomed to the thought of death by suicide" (155). Later in the
argument she continues "No, when I sat up and said: Death has got to
come if I call him, I never called him and never have" (160-161).
-
// oh but when she cut her wrists in 1953, she did not die.
But
on July 1, 1953 Stevie did call Death. Stevie attempted suicide by
slashing her wrists in her office. // 'in her office' as if important
~ but that's just bcs this was the source for the first article where
read it // Later she expressed regret to at least one friend, Anna Browne, for her
action and how upsetting it was for her aunt. However, the positive
result was that she was
pensioned off from her tedious secretarial role
and thereafter able to devote the rest of her life to her writing. It is
hard not to wonder how familiar Sylvia Plath was with this chain of
events when she made her own fateful decision ten years later.
//
no.... !? plath thinking maybe wld get relieved, no... even confusedly
I wouldn't think so... I would think she was committed to dying.
(hadn't she made prior attempts? and what did it get her? ...what is love what did it get me
Throughout the 1920s Stevie read voraciously and almost indiscriminately psychology, theology, history, classics and travel and kept journals that recorded her reading matter, thoughts and observations. It is in these notebooks that poems begin to appear, although she was not published until 1935 when The New Statesman took six of her poems. Encouraged by this she submitted a full manuscript of poems to Chatto and Windus, but they told her to "go away and write a novel" before publishing poems (Barbera & McBrien 75). In typical Stevie style, in just six weeks she completed the hit autobiographical satire
Novel on Yellow Paper, which launched her into London literary society.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevie_Smith
common subjects in her writing include loneliness; myth and legend;
absurd vignettes, usually drawn from middle-class British life; war;
human cruelty; and religion.
All her novels are lightly fictionalised accounts of her own life,
which got her into trouble at times as people recognised themselves. Smith said that two of the male characters in her last book are different aspects of George Orwell, who was close to Smith.
Born 20 September 1902 Kingston upon Hull, England
Died 7 March 1971 (aged 68) of brain tumour
(wkp..
When suffering from the depression to which she was subject all her
life,
Smith was so consoled by the thought of death as a release that,
as she put it, she did not have to commit suicide.
// I like "release" but not meaning fr living ~ but fr fear of living ? fr there being a way? th is not there for me? ( ~ so I want a way a carer but without that then?)
relief not have to have any way can have no way wh is wh I have ~
relief bcs death means there is no way ~ (this is not at all thought clear. )
* release fr anything else mattering but what I want ~? fr anything else must be ~ more real.
(not only anything else must be treated as deferred to pretended posited--yes-- but actually must be. it is not the case that anything else must be real. //wh is th problem?!? the trouble? some unacceptable disjunction? //well what do I say. that all this me (inside) is keep finding myself to be this body in this room (alien, external) ~ and it's not. "it was absolutely not like that." (ferrante) death is release into: nothing is what is. ~
what is, for me vs what must be? I am not what am. death means
it's all not __ [real? necessary* it is all not necessary.
[ it is all not anything. not here. gone. (not even 'gone'. not an absence as there.)
most of the time. (happen to be here alive at this moment,
but at most moments in all time, I am not.)
it's all terrible un -understanding. uncanny ? H. //*why does it mean evth "mean the world" to me
that it all is not understood? no ground. (bcs then I am right. ? wh is not here to me is not here.
everything bounded by as over against anything. //*so what I want matters*(?))
// terrible un -understanding. uncanny ? H. //
She wrote in several
poems //look up read those// that death was "the only god who must come when he is called" //
unlike. a parent. *
-put date as 1/14 to put w re article levy negativism bartleby "would neither work nor leave" wh today occasioned looking at not waving but drowning. but today is really Monday 1/28 (2019) ~ 1pm. maybe bump up to proper.
